School Council Election
Thank you to everyone who nominated for our School Council parent vacancies for 2023. As you will be aware, we had more nominations than vacancies. This means that we are having a School Council election for our parent category.
On Monday, families were posted an envelope including a ballot sheet, candidate statement and return envelopes (this should arrive at families’ homes today). As per the process, we encourage all families to make their vote and return their ballot paper to the school via mail or dropping at the office before 4.00pm on Monday 27th February. We can accept envelopes that have the post stamp of Monday 27th February. Votes will be counted during the week and successful candidates notified.
Professional Learning
Across the school, various staff have been undertaking some very rich and valuable Professional Learning in the areas of Professional Learning Communities and Mathematics. The Professional Learning Community (PLC) program aims to build the capacity and skills of school leaders and teachers to improve the learning and wellbeing outcomes for every student through a consistent approach to disciplined, collaborative inquiry and the implementation of PLCs as system architecture. This becomes the way of working' for all teachers to improve practice, knowledge, and attitudes to collectively work together to improve student outcomes.
The Leading Mathematics professional learning is supporting our mathematics team to investigate, analyse and strengthen our schoolwide approaches to mathematics learning, teaching and leadership at the classroom, team and school-wide levels. The Mathematics team will lead in-school investigations and professional learning to gain a greater understanding of contemporary research and approaches to highly effective mathematics teaching and learning. These efforts will inform the development of a school-wide, long-term mathematics improvement strategy as well as our daily teaching practices.
Staff Training Day
A reminder to families that Friday the 10th March is a Student Free Curriculum Day. Staff will be onsite undertaking Professional Learning in the are of PLCs and Framework for Improving Student Learning Outcomes. OSHClub will be operating all day on this day and families requiring this service are encouraged to contact OSHClub on 0422 236 845.
Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences
In line with the Victorian Government Schools Agreement (VGSA 2022) our Parents/Student/Teacher Conferences will be conducted at the beginning of Term 3 and formal written reports will be prepared at the end of Term 2 and Term 4. Whilst we will not be having Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences during Term 1 for Years 1-6, we encourage families needing to meet with teachers to contact their child/rens teacher through Compass to arrange a mutually suitable time to meet in person, via Webex or Zoom or over the phone. At all times throughout the school year, parents/caregivers are welcome to and encouraged to make contact with our staff to arrange meetings when needed. Our Foundation parents will be contacted by the Foundation Team in the coming weeks to arrange 1:1 Teacher/Parent Conversations.
Enjoy the rest of your week
Richard Buckingham—Principal
Year One/Two News
We have had a wonderful return to school in Year One/Two and have loved welcoming students and families back to school! It has been lovely to once again build our school connectivity and community.
In Year One/Two we began the year with many ‘getting to know you’ activities where the students and teachers played games, shared their interests, families, hobbies, skills and cultures. We began building our classroom communities through focusing on routines, classroom agreements and exploring our School Values of Respect, Resilience, Responsibility and Doing Your Best. You can see some of the student’s goal setting along the corridors as you walk through the Year One and Two hallways. We have begun learning about Growth Mindset and Emotional Wellbeing discussing our Zones of Regulation and identifying emotions we feel in these various zones.
Our Year One and Two students have now met all their specialist teachers in the learning areas of Japanese, Sport, Visual Art, and STEM or Performing Arts. Families can engage with the WNPS Art Room through the Instagram handle @willynorthps.artroom. We have also had a fantastic time setting up our Year Four/Five buddy grades and beginning our Buddies Program.
We would like to congratulate the Year One/ Two families for a smooth start back to school. It has been lovely to see student’s engage with their home reading and practicing from their Fluency books. We have enjoyed getting to meet and greet you and look forward to working alongside you this year to grow and develop your child!
Mathematics at WNPS - Dispositional indicators: 'mathematical mindsets'
Mathematics education research clearly states that helping our students understand the importance of developing and embracing a ‘growth mindset’ toward mathematics also supports to build positive dispositions. These positive dispositions along with our feedback are essential to students being confident and capable learners and changing their belief in what they can do and achieve.
The most prominent of these dispositions relate to:
· a willingness to make mistakes
· an inclination to accept and embrace struggle as a natural and expected indicator of deep learning
· a capacity to recognise mathematics as a creative task, and
· an appreciation that great maths learners are flexible and responsive to the problems they encounter.
We love solving problems at WNPS. Students are encouraged to work together, make observation, share ideas and talk about their strategies, as well as, take on the challenge of finding a solution…often there is more than one.
Below are 4 wonderful problems. What is truly wonderful however, is that it is quite likely students and families will use a variety of strategies to find a solution. George Pólya, a Hungarian mathematician said… “It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.”
Go ahead, take the challenge, pick one and have a go at finding a solution. Let us know how you go.
The Numeracy Curriculum PLC:
Crissy Samaras, Bronwyn Murry, Bec Barham, Patrick Kelly, Tahlia Zannoni, Dianna Lane & Jamie Peters
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Foundation My coat has buttons. Sometimes, I do them up starting with the top button. Sometimes I start somewhere else. How many ways can you find to do up my coat? How will you remember? |
Years 1 and 2 If I use 12 tiles to make a lawn, how many tiles would I need to make a boarder around them? How many different shaped lawns can you make with 12 tiles? Do you need a different number of boarder tiles around each lawn shape? Can you make models to show what different gardens would look like? |
Years 3 and 4 There are 4 sets of tea cups and saucers: a set of white, a set of blue, a set of red and a set of green. So, there are 16 cups and 16 saucers altogether. How many different combinations of cups and saucers can you create? Estimate before you try and solve this. |
Years 5 and 6 A set of ten cards each showing one of the digits from 0-9 is divided up between five envelopes so there are two cards in each envelope. The sum of the two numbers inside is written on each envelope: 7, 8, 13, 14, 3. What numbers could be inside the 8 envelope. |
Physical Education and Sport at Willy North
Term One is a packed calendar of events for Physical Education and Sport.
We recently had swimming trials and now have our competitors for our school swimming team. Great job by all students who tried out and a big thank you to those parents who assisted. Good luck to those who were successful as they compete in the district competition on 1st March at the Werribee Outdoor Pool.
School swimming lessons are on for students in Year Four as well as Year One and Two in term one and students in Year Three will attend from the first day next term.
Athletics Days are coming up fast! We have the Year Five and Six Athletics Day on Monday 6th March and the Year Three and Four Athletics Day on Tuesday 7th March. We will require some parent assistance, if you wish to assist on the day, please contact the Physical Education Team.
Inter-School Sport has kicked off again with some success in Rounds One and Two, it’s great to see our student having fun and competing against other district schools. Well done to all the Year Six students involved.
Well done to Isaac Kurti and Chloe Szambelanczyk who recently represented themselves and our school in the District Individual Tennis competition. Both finished third in the district.
While in the Physical Education classroom our junior students have been learning and developing their skills of teamwork, cooperation as well as safe and inclusive play on the playground. They are also learning minor games throughout lessons with and without equipment.
Senior students are doing their preparation for their Athletics Days and we look forward to the opportunity to venture to the Newport Athletics Track and for all students to have a fun-filling day with colour and athletics.
Students are encouraged to wear and dress in their house colours for Athletics Day and we look forward to a fun day at track.
Current Sporting Events on Compass:
Year One and Two Swimming Lessons
Year Three and Four Athletics Day
Year Five and Six Athletics Day
Inter-School Sport (Year 6)
District Swimming (Selected Students)
Coming Up:
Year 3 Swimming Lessons
Regional Lawn Bowls (Selected Year 6 students)
Performing Arts
The Performing Arts department are seeking expressions of interest from parents/carers who may be able to offer a few hours of their time over the next few weeks to assist with the stocktake and digital cataloguing of our costumes, props and musical instruments.
When: Thursdays, 2:30pm-3:30pm, Starting 16/2/23
Where: The Performing Arts room (Room 16)
What: Sorting through boxes and storage to organise, count and take photos of items, create a digital catalogue, and pack into storage.
With: Michelle Barnes, Performing Arts Teacher.
If interested, please email Michelle at:
missbarnes@willynthps.vic.edu.au
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Semester Two 2023 – (Term 1) Assembly Rotations |
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Term 1 – 20th February to 6th April |
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Week 5 |
Friday 24th February—3.00pm |
Junior |
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Week 6 |
Friday 3rd March—3.00pm |
Senior |
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Week 7 |
Friday 10th March—Staff Training Day |
No Students at School |
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Week 8 |
Friday 17th March—3.00pm |
Junior |
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Week 9 |
Friday 24th March—3.00pm |
Senior |
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Week 10 |
Friday 31st March—3.00pm |
Junior |
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Week 11 |
Thursday 6th April—Last Day of Term 2.10PM |
Whole School |
Docklands Sports Club is hosting the next Miniroos Soccer skills program from Sunday 26th February at 9.00am – 10.00am
The program will run for 8 weeks with a two break during the April school holidays.
Miniroos will be held at Ron Barassi Senior Park, Docklands Drive, Docklands.
For more details and registration:
https://membership.mygameday.app/regoform.cgi?formID=105799&programID=62801
